The Federal Communications Commission this month is expected to toss net neutrality rules put in place under the Obama administration, sparking fears similar to “Y2K.”
Net neutrality is the principle that Internet service providers must treat all data on the Internet the same, and not discriminate or charge differently by user, content or webiste. A Syracuse man recently was arrested for threating New York Republican John Katko over his support to repeal the policy.
Activists claim the move will allow Comcast and AT&T to block or slow down access to key content, but supporters of the FCC's pending decision argue none of that has proven to be true.
“The current rules were put in, basically saying we have a potential problem they never proved and it was ridiculous, so it is being repealed totally,” says blogger Scott Cleland, president of Precursor LLC.
Cleland says providers don't want to upset customers, so there's no benefit to blocking web content.
“Since the word net-neutrality was invented in 2004, none of the serious problems they talked about have occurred,” he says. “There are over 2,000 companies, in over 12 years, you can count on less than one hand any issues that have come up.”
The best one activist group could come up with is just 10 total breaches during that time, driven mainly by network security or traffic management disputes.